Moving forward, even though stable builds of CM10 are only becoming available now, the team has already started work on CyanogenMOD 10.1. This even newer version of the custom ROM will be based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. There are only a handful of new features, so they don’t feel that this newer version quite warrants being called CM11 just yet. We’ll have to wait on one built upon Key Lime Pie for that.

In the meantime, you can go to get.cm to look up your device and see if they’ve got a stable CM10 build for you. As always, loading custom ROMs and any other kind of hackery are done at your own risk and discretion.

[Source]

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The new Jellybean variant was put up in a YouTube video by Ricardo Cerqueira, running on an LG Optimus 4X HD. Is it perfect or ready for the hands of wouldbe-modders? Not just yet, it seems that they’ve run into a few snags with Google’s new search system, but considering 4.1 just arrived to a limited public very recently and they are already this far, it’s likely only a matter of time before a reasonably stable version of JellyBean is achieved.
The video of Jellybean running on the Optimus can be seen below.

[ source ]

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At the moment, the app is not officially available from the Android Market. But the developer has promised that it will be arriving there soon. For now, you can check it out via the developer’s blog.

It will only work on devices which run Ice Cream Sandwich though for now and will not be streaming music from your Google Music account. Neal expects that he will be able to backport CM9 Music “as much as possible”, but some features such as notification and lockscreen controls on older Android versions will have to be sacrificed.

But it’s definitely something to be tried out as it comes with new features such as gestures and notification controls, party shuffle, deleting tracks, setting ringtones, app-wide search, customizable playlists, several custom widgets, shake and flip actions, customizable theme engine and much more.

Head here if you are interested in downloading the app.

The post CyanogenMod 9 Music App Now Available for Android 4.0 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Whatever the hiccups the dedicated cloud-supported Web browser for Amazon’s Kindle Fire had been experienced in the past is irrelevant now. Hacker TyHi from XDA-Developers has built a Silk package that can be ported to CyanogenMod 7 ROM for the same Kindle Fire, then to many other rooted devices running CyanogenMod 7, or devices running some MIUI custom ROMs. “Many” here means not all devices, but the spread of Silk widens, so to speak, by the supporting efforts of hacker named puneet_champ who corrected permissions and repackaged the Silk app. Procedure to get you Silk on your non-Amazon rooted device is pretty simple:

1. Download the pack here or here.
2. Use Root Explorer to copy the lib files to /system/lib set permissions the same as the others.
3. Install all of the .apks like you would side load.
4. Copy the com.amazon.cloud9-1.apk from /data/app to /system/app
5. Reboot and enjoy

However, there are still plenty of reports on force closures, or mess-ups with Amazon accounts and syncing.  So if your device is not mentioned as a successful port in this database, you might wait a little bit longer. Owners of Nexuses and other devices running ICS may also want to wait a tidbit longer: adjusting Silk into a compliance with the Ice Cream Sandwich Android framework continues.

When success stories are reported, results are dubious still. First, just a simple porting of the Silk browser to other than Kindle Fire devices are nowhere in the position to cure inherent problems with the overall Amazon cloud support for Web browsing. Moreover, an influx of many devices running Silk without Amazon’s permission might worsen the workload for that cloud even more. Second, many devices where Silk was ported to were just Android phones with their smallish screens. Navigating controls of Silk just don’t scale down gracefully for these, as Silk is technically a browser for tablets with their bigger screens.

Me, I didn’t put Silk on my Nook Color just yet.

The post Amazon Kindle Fire Silk Browser Ported to Other Android Devices appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

First it was Trebuchet, a CyanogenMod 9 launcher, now this.

Developer Andrew Neal broke down the details of a versatile music player that is meant to replace the stock Android 4.0.3 app, and these include many exciting customizations: users will be able to set custom shake actions (i.e. for next song or play/pause) that can work throughout the OS or when the screen is off, there will be custom notification area controls that can have as many or as few controls as you’d like, then there is an ability to search Android Market, set ringtones, and use swipe-gestures throughout the app. Neal is also planning on adding a full theme engine for others to customize the look and feel of the app, remember Winamp?

It’s not available for downloading just yet, but will eventually get baked into the full Cyanogenmod 9 ROM. Andrew Neal is also planning on releasing a version of the app into the Android Marketplace at some point, so non-hackers should get a chance to improve their music experience as well.

CyanogenMod 9 is available for maybe half dozen devices right now, and these ROMs are still mostly in their beta custom form, but there’s no doubt that soon there will be much more phones and tablets running these optimized, streamlined and very functional ROMs based on Android Open Source Project’s  Android 4.0.3 source code. Very early appearance of custom launcher (Trebuchet) and this replacement for stock Android 4.0 music player is a sure sign for this.

The post CyanogenMod 9 Music Player Coming To Android Market appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Motorola officially announced that  their Droid Bionic would see an upgrade to Android 4.0 in the coming months, however some users may get the taste of Ice Cream Sandwich on their devices right now.

Alpha release of a custom CyanogenMod9 port named Ics4Bionic has found its way to Droid masses at the Droid Forums. Features of this ICS port include:

What works:
Graphics working smooth now
ADB is working so we can track the rest
Touchscreen
Capacitive buttons
Charging indicator
BlueTooth
Both SD Cards
Built-in Screenshot
Reboot menu
Phone and SMS works
GPS fully functional
Audio fully working
1x data now working
NOTE: you may have to dial *#*#4636#*#* (or use Phone Info from the market) and toggle data mode between modes. For me toggling to GSM or WCDMA and then back to CDMA only usually does it. Once you see the status change to unknown leave it there it takes up to a minute to connect.

Not working:
3G/4G data….still sorting it out
USB support is still in progress sometimes it will mount in windows
Camera

Usual caveats and disclaimers apply to all brave souls that may want to switch to ICS ahead of the crowd — even without working 3G or 4G data, and with non-working camera. Then, the procedure is rather convoluted and based on use of a special SafeStrap bootstrapping utility for the Bionic.

The post Motorola Droid Bionic Gets Custom ICS Port (CM9) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

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This is a very early custom build of CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0.3 out of Android Open Source Project) that didn’t get its own fork at CyanogenMod repositaries just yet. Adventurous users and fans of the original Motorola Droid may get a first glimpse of ICS goodness on their phones by using a download link here. Make sure to follow the discussion at XDA-Developers if you read this news late, as the new builds pop up constantly.

This build (or as author calls it “attempt”) was accomplished by XDA developer kfazz. As the video above shows, it’s quite nice and reasonably smooth for a more than 2 year old phone with just 256 MB of RAM. First test reports show that the build has colors that are fixed from previous kfazz builds, UI is a lot smoother, screenshot works, WiFi works. Interestingly enough, the available memory is about the same as what it was on Gingerbread — 90mb free, and that is without all of the memory booster tweaks, such as Supercharger, etc. Screen rotation is backwards, keyboard out triggers portrait, and the camera gives a “cannot connect error”. The’re’s more quirks and bugs to keep this highly experimental build a daily runner for Droid, but the work goes on for the growing excitement of Droid community.

There’s also a report that the last update of this ICS ROM works on Motorola Milestone A854 model (but not on A853 model). All in all, it’s a Christmas gift for Droid fans that came early.

The post Pre-Alpha Build of ICS on original Motorola Droid A855 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It looks like more of a proof of a principle than anything useful for an ordinary NOOK Tablet user. ARM port of Ubuntu smaller distribution made by AdamOutler and Loglud of XDA-Developers’ fame runs on NOOK Tablet since December 9 already. Engadget seemed to notice it just the other day, and even now it looks like they missed the true significance of this development they covered.

Nobody out of AdamOutler, Loglud, and other developers for NOOK Tablet ever had the idea of porting a desktop Linux, Ubuntu, or not, for its own sake. Their task is the investigation of the ways it might take to circumvent a locked bootloader of NOOK Tablet that apparently loads only cryptographically “signed” stock kernel and other critical software. Locked firmware is nothing new in the world of smartphones’ firmware. Plenty of past developments for methods of circumventing rigid security measures was centered on successful compilation of 2ndInit, kexec and some other sophisticated hijacking tools that may open the path to running custom firmware on such a device. So far, attempts to run a non-signed custom kernel were not successful for many devices. On top of that, implementations of security measures are different and varying wildly for different devices, so the success of getting “customized” ROM on one type of Droid doesn’t necessarily mean other Droid models will also comply.

However, this demo for the proof of a concept inches just a tad closer to these developer’s target: it’s not Linux (Ubuntu) on NOOK Tablet they are dreaming of. It’s CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0.3 out of Android Open Source Project). One day, it could be webOS, who knows.

The post Ubuntu Running On NOOK Tablet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It was reported at XDA-Developers forum yesterday that the OTA (OTA=Over-The-Air) update for the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet to its 6.2.1 version of firmware has killed its rooting procedure, a so called SuperOneClick. It’s worth mentioning that rooting in itself is not the real target for all those tinkerers at XDA-Developers and elsewhere. It’s just a tool that facilitates running alternative firmware on the Fire, namely CyanogenMod 7 and coming CyanogenMod 9 (based on Android Open Source Project for Ice Cream Sandwich). It improves handling the device in its sideloading mode, and, conversely, sideloading some system apps might take rooting and superuser privileges essential.

The SuperOneClick app for Kindle Fire that stopped working for its intended purpose is just a single, simple to use tool among the more demanding and convoluted procedures of manual rooting. Like it happened before with many smartphones and tablets, the routines of re-rooting (or rooting again for your device, after the firmware update push) will be found sooner rather than later.

The pesky silent OTA updates irritate anyone who has rooted their Fires previously, modified their firmware, and otherwise enhanced their experience with the tablet. As always, development is conducted to solve the problem of losing root at the next Firmware OTA upgrade. Simple tools are known, such as block the “hosts” file to stop Amazon’s updating servers from reaching  your Fire. A DeviceUpdater system app can be killed, renamed, or deleted. FOTA (FOTA= Firmware OTA) Kill app was brought in to the arsenal. But cat and mice games are continuing.

As for now, a pre-rooted stock 6.2.1 update is taking its shape. When the development will be finished, it will become another backup plan for tinkerers of the Kindle Fire. Then, no need to write off SuperOneClick and other user-friendly rooting tools just yet: these utilities are tweaked constantly to address any threats of silent “un-rooting” OTA updates.

As for the update itself, you won’t hear many good words about improvements that this update can supposedly offer: the base of it is still Android 2.3, and not Android 4.0.3, or even Android 3.2 which are both more suited for a tablet-sized device than this phone-centric and ageing Gingerbread. Your mileage may vary though, and some high-bandwidth videos on your Fire may even stop stuttering.

The post Silent OTA Kindle Fire Update Breaks Root appeared first on Mobile Magazine.